First, as with any label, some series may or may not market themselves as “gay and lesbian.” For instance, the creators of the hit series Anyone But Me, have said in interviews (including with me) that their show is as much about post-9/11 New York/America and coming of age as about sexuality. Still, I’ve labeled these series as such because I think they would be of interest to gay and lesbian people. For original web content, often it’s about curating, allowing people to find the material.

Second, many will notice my use of “gay and lesbian,” neglecting the other labels in the spectrum: bisexual, trans/transgender and queer. This is unfortunately not a mistake. I’ve found in my brief survey of the shows so far that many of them do not explicitly address the parts of the community (if we are to call it that) other than gays/lesbians. I suspect this is about marketing. Television conceives of its audiences as such, and these series are looking to fill a void left by loss of explicitly gay shows like Showtime’s The L Word and Noah’s Arc.

Third, not on the list are the many shows with side characters or even gay storylines but whose narratives focus on heterosexual people. What comes to mind are shows like Buppies that are quite proud of their gay storylines and probably have strong gay audiences. This was a curating decision. I couldn’t include everything.

Along those lines, I did not include the many gay vloggers out there, like Chris Crocker, Michael Buckley, B. Scott and the numerous others who are quite popular on YouTube. Once again, I limited it to “scripted” content — including more narrative-based reality programming — simply to keep myself from going crazy.

I was surprised how well-distributed the content was along gender lines. This may change as I add more shows, but as of now, out of 32 shows, 18 are lesbian-focused and the rest are gay male oriented. I’d suspected to find more gay male shows, because of issues of capital, but at least for now that isn’t the case. This might be because AfterEllen has done such a terrific job of showcasing lesbian series, it made them easy to find. Gay male slanted sites like Queerty and AfterElton have been a bit more scattered in their coverage.

Lastly, I was also surprised how many shows I saw make it to season two and even season three. This is not something I saw with black web series. Whether this reflects increased demand for gay/lesbian web series, or more capital on the part of producers, I’m not sure. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting observation.

That’s it! Enjoy! And it you have questions and comments or suggestions on series I may have missed (I imagine there are a lot), please contact me!

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About The Author

Aymar Jean Christian is assistant professor of communication at Northwestern University. He writes about media and society for a number of publications. For more information, click the "About" tab at the top of the page.